Abstract in another language

This dissertation compares the discourses and practices of legitimation in Dahomey/Benin and in
Togo from colonial conquest to the present. It analyses the use of memory for the legitimation of
local political authority in a West African borderland. Especially for societies without strong written
traditions, such as the Lokpa in Northern Benin and Lokpa and Lama in Northern Togo, historians
have to use living memory (oral history) for reconstructions of the history of events, people and their
way of life. Memory, however, has the inherent problem of being incomplete and not necessarily
faithful to historical “facts”. Memory has to be regarded as a contemporary phenomenon, a living
link between the past and an ever‐changing present and the interests connected with it. Lokpa‐Lama
chiefs sustain the legitimacy of their authority through recourse to collective memories that interpret
the cultural heritage and their position as authority figures. However, these interpretations of the
past are often contentious because of their relationship to the legitimacy of power, which has
become increasingly contested in recent years. Memory is manipulated by local actors through
subjective and selective remembrance as well as through forgetting. The Dissertation analyses,
through a micro‐historical perspective, the interpretation of the past through memory and its
utilisation by chiefs for the social construction of their authority. Starting from current conflicts and
their interpretation, it offers a reconstruction of different discourses of legitimate authority among
the Lokpa‐Lama and of the changing historical contexts to which they were and are related, from the
precolonial through the colonial to the post‐independence periods. Since these contexts differed not
only over time but also on the two sides of the Benin‐Togo border, this analysis also offers insights
about the different historical trajectories of dispute about local authority in the two nation states
compared.